'An Evening of Stealth Rock' is what the flyer says, and, within the
confines of that description, is what we get. Genres however are a tricky
cove, pigeonholing bands is either a source of worry or great amusement
depending on your preference.

Take Aereogramme for instance - the label says 'alt.us.rock',
but they say NOT, being from Glasgow like all tonight's bands. They do
look however like doppelgangers for members of
Grandaddy, Green Day and Tad (a slimmer, better looking Tad, I hasten to
add). And their sound is a bit Rex, a bit Shellac, though oddly not much
like Slint at all. Bearing in mind that I appear to have come to the wrong
city at the wrong end of the decade, this isn't such a bad state of
affairs. Their sound, then, well, the opening song could indeed be
mistaken for something of that US indie genre, but much of their set is
instrumental, and the Glaswegian/stealth/math tag does apply, at least
some of the time. The openers, by the way, feature one Craig B (he's the
be-hatted, bearded one), formerly of Ganger, and famous connections is
(apart from the stealth-rock bit) the common theme of tonight's
bands.

Thus, Eska used to have a famous member, or at least used
to drink in the same pub as Stuart out of Mogwai. There the comparison
ends, and I'm not sure what the Mogwai fans who have come to study
indie-rock geneaology would have made of Eska, but they are not much
like their Gremlin-monickered cousins at all. Tough they don't do many
'songs' and what they do produce doesn't have loud/quiet/LOUD
structures. There's occasionally more of a Bogshed element to their art
rather than the Sl-band, but this mingles with decidedly prog tendencies -
they're tighter than the wrong end of most acquatic creatures, Willie the
drummer impressing in particular, and with their niiice interplay - Gentle
Giant meets Brand X, for you genre-spotters out there - a contract with
Guided Missile surely awaits.

And so to Macrocosmica, headlining and gratifyingly
retaining most of the audience, if not all the photographers. Their genre
preference is Very Metal and although they've tempered (!) their sound of
late they do still sound like Ozzy Osbourne meeting a Sherman tank
head-on. The audience were doubtless gratified to hear that they have
gone back to a mix of tunes along with frighteningly noisy rhythms, like
on their groundbreaking Ad Astra album (many had feared that
their death metal direction of late was more than a passing phase). The
dictionary definition of 'stealth' says that "detection via sonar is made
difficult, and progress is inperceptible"... Macrocosmica more that the
others fail to meet that definition, but you wouldn't miss any of the
bands in a crowd.